A UDA murder gang is targeting west Belfast lawyer Padraig O Muirigh, it
has emerged. It is the same outfit which, in collusion with British
forces, carried out the 1989 killing of high-profile Belfast defence
lawyer, Pat Finucane.

The North’s political process has ground to a halt after the DUP
dramatically reneged on a deal to appoint a Sinn Fein Speaker of the
Stormont Assembly and then entirely boycotted the opening of a new round
of talks in Belfast.

Miscarriage of justice victim John Paul Wootton has had his life
sentence tariff increased by four years by the Court of Appeal, despite
the chief justice admitting that the youth played no identifiable role
in the CIRA action for which he received a life sentence.

The coalition 26-County government has been accused of using this week’s
annual budget announcements as an attempt regain popular support after
comprehensively losing two by-elections while 100,000 people marched in
Dublin against the hated new water charges.

In 2005, ten years after the organisation declared a ‘ceasefire’, the
unionist paramilitary UVF continued to gather personal information on
leading republicans with the intention of targeting them for
assassination.

Relatives of Easter Rising combatants are still being kept in the dark
about commemoration plans for the centenary. Meanwhile, concerns have
mounted that the Dublin government will promote a pro-British version of
the events of 1916, which launched Ireland’s fight for independence.

British military intelligence agents in the north of Ireland used fears
about demonic possessions, black masses and witchcraft as part of a
psychological war against emerging armed groups in the conflict in the
1970s, they have admitted.

Crowds not seen in several years have demonstrated against water
charges on the streets of Dublin city centre this afternoon as voters
delivered a stunning message of no confidence in two by-elections to
the Dublin parliament.

The Mayor of Dublin, Christy Burke, has been forced to seek a meeting
with Garda police chiefs over what he described as the excessive force
being used against anti-water charge protestors in the city.

The UDA is being blamed for an arson attack on the home of a nationalist
councillor in County Antrim. Extensive smoke damage was caused to
Padraig McShane’s home in the town of Ballycastle early on Saturday.

The 26-County Taoiseach Enda Kenny has promised that next week’s budget
will see the first step in reducing the top rate of tax for the state’s
highest earners, but that any move to abolish the new charges and taxes
on the general public would amount to “economic and social madness”.

The Dublin government has been urged to do more to maintain contact with
its emigrant population after a deceased Galway man was only saved from
an unmarked grave in England by the efforts of a deaths registration
official in London and a retired school teacher.

Plans to abandon or scale down a number of investigations into past
British atrocities in the north of Ireland are being blamed by
Stormont ministers on a cut in the British exchequer’s annual block
grant for the Six Counties.

A public campaign against the installation of water meters in the 26
Counties has further escalated following the official start of billing
of the public by Irish Water, the new state-owned water utility board.